Can AI Actually Find Your Soulmate? | Dating App Founder Jake Kozloski

And before we get into what you're doing and how you're doing things differently, do you have any opinions on better or worse dating apps or apps with better incentives than others, Tinder, Hinge, Bumble?

yeah i mean um i think you know probably common knowledge but hinge is better than tinder uh if if for no other reason then it gives you a little more granularity in terms of uh filtering ability you can hear um you know you can you get more context there's like voice notes um uh you know i i'm uh here i am pitching hinge which is not is not what I set out to do, but, um, uh, so, and there's also just the brand halo of, you know, the hinge positions itself as higher intent product.

And so it's going to be more likely to attract higher intent people.

Um, So another approach to take would be, it's not even that there's one correct app generally.

For the world that we're in today, sort of before high intent matchmaking has been solved, right? No one has created the black mirror, hang the DJ, sci-fi app that can introduce you to your soulmate on the first try.

That's what we're trying to build.

Some of our competitors are trying to do the same.

but no one's done it yet.

And so in the meantime, how do you solve your problem? People assortatively mate and a huge problem that dating apps have is they have these very disparate pools, especially as, as the world is sort of, you know, globalized and, and, become more diverse.

And I don't just mean ethnically in part, but in a lot of ways, people are more different.

I live in New York City.

We're just completely different.

Religions, values, income levels, all these things that people look for in a partner, people similar to themselves on, it's hard to find that if you're just randomly going outside or just randomly on Tinder or Hinge.

Um, and so the apps that are going to attract the people similar to you are probably a good place to start, right? So, um, you know, if you are a Christian, let's say Christian focused apps, you're going to pre-select for a lot of the types of things that you're looking for.

So, um, uh, you know, if you're very high openness, right? Like maybe some of the more out there apps like field or something are actually a good fit for you because that's going to attract a similar type of person.

and one of the points that i've seen you make is that dating apps are incentivized to keep people single even though hinge does say something like dating app meant to be deleted that's how they advertise i i assume you think you you would say that's deceptive advertising

yeah i i um uh I think as long as you make money off of the user not deleting the app, you are not designed to be deleted.

Right.

And we're going to get into at some point later in the conversation about how Hinge tried to buy you guys out, but they had an issue with your pro-marriage stance.

We'll get to that in a bit.

I was going to ask you, do you think some of these dating apps like Hinge and Bumble and Tinder could ever become incentivized to be pro-marriage?

Yeah.

I don't think Tinder would ever make such a drastic pivot because that's not their position, that's not their brand.

I think in order for Hinge to do that, they would need to build a product that can actually make good matches regularly, which I would argue today it doesn't.

Most people on Hinge, that's not their experience.